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Monday, 4 April 2016

6 Top Tips for Decluttering Your Home

Marie Kondo and her unconventional how-to-guide is currently taking the world by storm, regularly at the top of best-selling book lists and many have claimed it to have transformed their lives! You must have already heard of her famous KonMari method by now, but if not, Marie Kondo’s renowned book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying: A Simple, Effective Way to Banish Clutter Forever is the secret to a stress-free and simple de-cluttered home.

Having devoted 80 percent of her life to her KonMari method of simple clutter banishing, starting tidying at the age of 5 - discarding and then thoroughly organising - the book is filled with a diverse range of tips and inspiring benefits to both your home, life and health of a clutter-free home. The benefits are substantial; it’s not impossible to see that putting your house in order positively affects all other aspects of your life, including your working life and family relationships - readers have noted that KonMari inspired them to launch their own dream business, reconcile with old friends, increase work productivity and success, and even lose weight.

Space Clearing isn’t just a recent fad, with many other renowned advocates across the globe, including Karen Kingston. Kingston, whose books Clear your Clutter with Feng Shuiand Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui uncover the relationship between clutter and energy with physical, mental, emotional and spiritual effects, worked with us atCannon West to create a positive and creative energised space.

When it comes to decluttering, there’s so much inspiration and advice to look to from award-winning books. We’re not talking about excessive tidying and cleaning to create a space that is sterile and resembles a showroom, but to create a space that is beautiful and tidy, that allows you to showcase and enjoy your loved furniture and accessory pieces. After trying these tidying methods ourselves for both our home and Showroom, we’ve put together our top tips for decluttering your home:

Find your inspiration
You need to be focused to ensure you declutter effectively and efficiently, not haphazardly. Think in detail about how you want your space to look. Take a look at inspiring interiors in the latest magazines, online on Houzz and renowned design blogs. If you have any trouble or difficulty, work with an Interior Designer, it’s not expensive and the benefits will be astronomical. Whether you’re designing a new room interior or even dreaming up a new home, visualise in detail so you can realistically achieve your goal. As Marie Kondo says, discarding and tidying will transform your life. But you do need something powerful to guide and inspire you!

Let the emotional and lifestyle benefits inspire you
‘Tidying has far more effect than feng shui or power stones and other spiritual goods’, as Marie Kondo herself says! The magic of tidying has a phenomenal effect on our everyday lives; by forcing us to question whether every single item we own truly sparks joy and making a decision to discard because of this, allows us to naturally hone our decision-making skills, and in turn our confidence in ourselves. As decluttering and tidying can dramatically improve our lifestyle and perspective, use this as something to urge you forward - is there something specific you would like to change about yourself, excel at, or simply try for the first time? Focus on starting that dream business, finding happiness, getting in touch with long lost friends, or improving your performance at work - whatever it is that inspires you, use it to motivate your tidying method!

Use the KonMari Method
Marie Kondo started studying the art of tidying seriously at the age of 15, and now owns a business in Tokyo where she uses her KonMari method to help transform people’s homes into inspiring, relaxing spaces. With the KonMari method, you’ll never feel like you’re constantly tidying again:

Tidy all at once - If you tidy a bit at a time, the result will never be as successful, and things will get messy again quickly. Tidy all at once, but ensure you allot enough time for the project, ideally a weekend per room.

Visualise your destination - Visual your ideal lifestyle before you start discarding anything. What are your goals? You must think in concrete terms, with specific ideas that you can vividly picture. For example, picture somebody’s house that you really admire and look forward to visiting, because it’s so peaceful, tranquil and inspiring - what is it that makes it so peaceful; does it have clever storage? How are the decorative pieces displayed? Is it clutter free? Take inspiration from it and use it as a destination for when you’re decluttering.

Determine if each item “sparks joy” - Take each item by hand and ask yourself “does this spark joy?”. If yes, it stays. If not, then throw it out. It’s important that you must touch every item, so that your body can react - you let your body and your emotions tell you what to do. Your focus must be on cherishing items you love, rather than focusing solely on discarding, which is something Marie Kondo acknowledges as only bringing unhappiness.

Tidy by category, not location - In most households, items that fall into one category will be stored in various places across the home. Put everything of the same category together in one place before sorting out, for example; take all of your clothes from your wardrobe, chest of drawers, shelves, hangers etc. and organise as a whole, rather than tackling one location at a time.

Tidy in the right order - Marie Kondo always tidies in the following order: Clothes, Books, Papers and finally Komono (misc).

Discard before you place things back - You have to discard first, do not put anything away, or buy anything new, until everything you are going to discard has been removed.

Tidy with friends
As the KonMari method states, tidying works best when it’s done in one huge go, rather than scattered over time. This can be a bit of a daunting task, so why not make the most of it and get your friends involved? They’ll be able to offer a valuable second opinion and will probably be a good voice of reason when it comes to whether that piece of clothing is really vital to you or not. Once you have your pile of items to discard, you could always see if there are certain pieces you could swap!

Work with the local community
Decluttering and tidying can leave you with a lot of products that, although no longer right for you, are in too good a condition to just throw away. Give back to the local community, set up morning trade sessions, or sell at a fete to raise money for the local school or Parish.

And lastly, think of the storage solutions!
Once you have decluttered your home, you need to ensure that it stays clutter free. The only way to stay clutter free and ensure that your home is a restful haven is with clever storage solutions. At Cannon West, these are some of our favourite storage solutions available right now:

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